Nazi Hunters In Argentina Pursue New Evidence Of Peron Complicity

December 02, 1997|By Laurie Goering, Tribune Staff Writer.

BUENOS AIRES — For historians seeking to trace the shadowy traffic in Nazi fugitives and their stolen loot in South America after World War II, the two safe-deposit boxes opened last week at a Sao Paulo bank are a major discovery.

Rubies, emeralds, gold watches and stacks of cash were found alongside gold fillings and dentures. Among documents marked with swastikas was a German passport issued by the Third Reich and, most important, a diary written by the treasure's late owner, Albert Blume, a pawnbroker and Nazi Party member who investigators believe amassed $4.5 million working as a front man for transfers of Nazi assets to Brazil.

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published Dec. 10, 1997:Corrections and clarifications.A story Dec. 2 on Nazi hunters in Argentina mistakenly said Nazi fugitive Joseph Mengele was captured. He actually drowned in a swimming accident in Brazil. The Tribune regrets the error.

In Argentina, by contrast, long infamous as the favored haven of Nazi war criminals, similar evidence is frustratingly rare.

Central Bank records released last year show scant proof that looted Nazi gold, gems or artwork ever entered Argentina. Diplomatic and presidential records also have been of little help.

"There is no evidence," said a frustrated Sergio Widder, Latin American representative for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "We have no idea how much money came or where it is."

As investigators dig for clues to vanished fortunes believed stolen from the Third Reich's Jewish victims and brought to Argentina, what they are finding instead is the first hard evidence of long-suspected Nazi ties to former Argentine leader Juan Peron and his wife, Evita.

Peron's top officials, Argentine documents show, hired Horst Fuldner, an Argentine-born captain of Adolf Hitler's feared SS, to coordinate the entry of at least dozens of Nazi war criminals to Argentina after World War II and help bring in some of the 40,000 other Germans who entered Argentina from 1945 to 1955. Most of the Germans have never been investigated for Nazi ties.

Peron "undoubtedly knew what was going on," said Beatriz Gurevitz, former director of Project Testimony, a $200,000 study completed last year of Argentine records related to the Nazi influx and made public in 1992.

That is troubling news for Argentina's government, which is still run by a Peronist majority and desperately wants to shed the nation's image of Nazi collaboration, something it believes cripples Argentina to this day in international relations.

The feared Dr. Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, who sent millions of Jews to concentration camps, were caught in Argentina, along with other top Nazi criminals. How many other elderly Nazis may still be sipping coffee in Buenos Aires' elegant European-style cafes no one knows.

Argentine officials have long insisted the numbers are minimal. In 1972, officials insisted that only one Nazi--Eichmann-- had come to Argentina.

Some Jewish investigators, at the other extreme, have pegged the number of Nazis, fascists and collaborators who entered Argentina at close to 60,000, including at least 1,000 SS members.

The most credible study, conducted by a University of Cologne researcher, puts the number of German and Austrian war criminals entering Argentina at between 40 and 60.

That does not include Nazi and fascist war criminals from other countries, including Croatia and Ukraine, or the many German scientists and technicians recruited by Peron to boost Argentina's technological prowess, according to Ignacio Klich, a historian chosen to lead a Nazi inquiry commission launched this year by President Carlos Menem.

What is clear, the new records show, is that Argentina was an unusually safe landing place for Nazis, who also entered countries as diverse as the U.S., Spain and the Soviet Union.

Until 1994, Argentine law barred the extradition of any criminal convicted in absentia by another country. Arriving Nazis published a German-language paper, Der Weg, or The Path, filled with articles written under their own names.

They went to the trouble of taking on new Argentine identities, but even some of the most infamous eventually dropped them. Mengele, who went by the alias Helmut Gregor, had a passport in his name.

The Auschwitz "Angel of Death" also sought to open a private medical practice in Buenos Aires--an effort blocked by the German medical board--and was repeatedly tipped off by Argentine police to extradition requests, Gurevitz said.

"What's unique about Argentina is the impunity the Nazis enjoyed," she said.

"They were very confident," Klich added. "They understood Argentina to be a sympathetic country."

Argentina's newly launched Nazi commission, which began work in July, will try to pin down the number of Nazi war criminals who entered the country, using newly released diplomatic and military records.

The panel also will look into what looted Nazi assets were brought in.

The panel of government-appointed researchers hopes to issue a series of reports early in the second half of 1998, Klich said.